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While the politicians are bashing each other in Washington, D.C. over healthcare reform, a little known incident occurred at UC San Diego’s School of Medicine that underscores the inequities of our healthcare system. I know this because I found online a colored photo of a gold-masked Egyptian mummy being rolled into a six-slice CT scanner.

A team of cardiologists and Egyptologists had carefully scanned 22 mummies from the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. Each mummy was at least 3200 years old. The doctors and researchers found that more than half of the mummies had cardiovascular disease. The co-investigator of the study, cardiologist Dr. Michael Miyamoto said, “Our findings remind us of the value of preventative medicine.”

The mummy study demonstrated that healthcare is already available to every American man and woman if they only wait long enough.

I can hear your protests now: why should Egyptian mummies have better healthcare than the American public? Our Congressional leaders have discussed that issue as I discovered in my recent review of the news.

John Boehner, the current Republican house minority leader, interviewed in Mother Jones Magazine: “The Republican healthcare plan, when we have time to knock one out, focuses on innovative wellness programs to help avoid serious and costly illnesses. All that’s required for those Egyptian mummies is end-of-life care. That’s it. Just a little hand-holding and some Tylenol. Under our planned plan, this means great savings for the typical American taxpayer who, by contrast, has a shitload of pre-existing conditions.”

He added “Imagine how long those mummies would’ve waited for their CT scans if there’d been a public option. They would’ve been dead by now. Those mummies show what we mean by death panels.”

Harry Reid, interviewed on FOX news, angrily stated “Look who funded the mummies’ CT Scans. Siemens Healthcare and the National Bank of Egypt. Once again an international mega-corporation and financial institution control who gets good healthcare: Mummies– the wealthiest old patients. Do you know how much those mummies are worth, individually? Of course they could afford the best American healthcare. Talk about rationing of care!”

Boehner, quoted in Ms. Magazine: “Harry, there you go again. The mummies’ CT scans were actually done in Egypt. By outsourcing our healthcare in this way, costs are substantially lowered. What difference does it make if your prostate exam is performed in Pakistan rather than Peoria?”

“I’d like to interject something here,” said Senator Joe Lieberman, addressing the International UFO Congress. “I was in favor of the mummies receiving the CT Scans. Then I was opposed to the mummies receiving the CT Scans. Now I’m inclined to favor a motion to proceed to oppose a motion to favor a filibuster to oppose a motion to favor or proceed to permit the mummies continuing to be part of our healthcare system, but I expect to vote against my vote.”

“Joe, it’s time to take your pills,” Hadassah Lieberman said to her husband, during an interview with Vanity Fair’s reporter Leslie Bennetts in the November issue.

“Harry Reid can’t get beyond the liberal pressures from his party,” House Minority Leader John Boehner stated to attendees at the National Association of Cat Therapists. “While it’s true we’re against paying for healthcare for foreign people, these Egyptian mummies will not be emigrating to the United States. No sir. For humanitarian and research purposes, America examined and treated them in Egypt. We’ll give them palliative, end-of-life care. And if they ever die again, we’ll make sure they’re given another proper burial in some cave.”

“As Senate Minority Leader, I want to thank John, the House Minority Leader, for his wise words,” said Mitch McConnell, as reported by Brian Ross of ABC news, covering the annual convention of the Goldfish Society of America. “Because I’m Senate Minority Leader, it’s my job to see that healthcare reform is possible by not passing healthcare reform. I know John’s been saying the same thing. And I know he’ll keep speaking out about this in the other House, where he belongs. As the Senate Minority Leader, I urge you to remember the most important thing about healthcare reform: I’m the Senate Minority Leader.

Harry Reid, in a recent article in Glamour Magazine: “I’d like to see how John Boehner would like it if he didn’t have our Congressional health insurance plan, and finally developed skin cancer from all his tanning booth sessions.”

Interviewed by Beauty Editor Alyssa K. Hertzig of Allure Magazine, John Boehner stated “Harry Reid just doesn’t get it, when it comes to healthcare. Just like he doesn’t get that my skin tone is my natural color. When I was born November 17, 1949, that day there was a high level of geomagnetic storms and solar activity—you can look it up—so my skin tone is a result of that exposure. I am permanently bronzed. What right does Harry Reid have to bring my skin color into this discussion on healthcare? He looks like he posed for Grant Woods’ American Gothic. All he needs is a pitchfork.”

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Stretch of the Imagination

“Tansy Wilcox” is following this blog. Also “Peaches Forney,” “Angel Barry,” “Tawny Du,” and “Cherry Thorn.”

I know this because I received a separate Twitter from each one of them announcing they were followingTygerpen.This is the beauty of Twitter, that I can be notified personally by my fans, including female fans with exotic names who thoughtfully accompany their Tweet to me with generous photos of themselves in various stages of undress while assuming body-challenging positions that draw attention to their dexterity and other organs.

While I don’t think these photos are really necessary or informative, they remind me how the bodies of young people are capable of amazing contortions previously impossible for older generations. It can’t be from yoga poses like Downward Facing Dog because these young women probably don’t get their exercise from yoga, and no self-respecting dog has ever been seen with his nose on the ground, legs tilted forward and ass uplifted like a furry telescope. My standard poodle would never assume a position resembling an inverted “V,” even for a jumbo milkbone.

So how do these partially clothed young women arch their backs, stretch, twist and sprawl in poses worthy of permanent chiropractic care? Credit for must go to corporations such as JanSport, the world’s leading manufacturer of backpacks, for marketing to schools and parents the health benefits of weighting children’s spines with the equivalent of the 32 volume set of Encyclopedia Britannica or any book by Robert Caro.

After 12 years of backpacks, children’s spines are like supermarket twist ties, capable of being maneuvered in any direction except straight up. They’ve developed either a graceful permanent sway back or an attractive premature dowager’s hump. Their spinal configurations enable them to eventually get jobs that feature heavy lifting like stocking inventory, or sitting for extended time such as working as a glaucoma tester for cut-rate strip mall optometrists, blowing into patients’ eyes.

Backpacks are one subject where parents repeatedly lie to their children as a way to influence their behavior, consistent with the recent UC San Diego study which examined “parenting by lying.” I’m familiar with this principle: When I was young my mother would tell me we were “taking a drive,” as if to a toy store. A half hour after we began the drive, she’d steer the car to the brick-covered Children’s Clinic and I’d be marched inside for a shot I’d hoped she’d forgotten, like for polio or rabies. Today some moms and dads lie to their children who complain about the humungous backpacks. With straight faces these parents insist the book loads aren’t harmful, that their student will get used to carting around for twelve or more years the equivalent of a wine barrel.

Fortunately, my two sons cut often school enough so that backpacks weren’t an issue.

Last week a young man I know showed me with considerable pride his brown Labrador retriever named “Mack” who was wearing a DOG BACKPACK. Mack was to accompany his master on a camping trip to the Sierras. Rather than a carrying a loaded backpack stuffed with dog food, however, Mack was carting his master’s beer.

This is one more indignity heaped on dogs. It’s bad enough children are told that schlepping backpacks designed for pack animals is healthful. But dogs, particularly poodles, have over the past few years already experienced abuses like bizarre breeding that produces hybrids with tongue-twisting names— Labradoodles, Goldendoodles, PugaPoos, ChiPoos, SharPoos, Bossi-Poos, Bich-Poos, Foodles, Rottles, and Schnoodles (Giant Schnauzer/Poodle mix sold with sour cream).

I recently saw an unusually fluffy dog with the ingenious name of Fluffy coiled under an outdoor table at Starbucks intensely and disturbingly licking its lower quarters as if a mocha frappuccino had spilled there. His master said Fluffy was a combination of Cocker Spaniel, Labradoodle, and Goldendoodle, or as it is better known, a Cockadoodledo.

With this insane hybrid dog breeding, my standard poodle Nigel has taken to hiding out of fear I will mate him with a beagle to produce a “Poogle,” which looks like the two dogs’ DNAs beat each other up. Nigel also fears an arranged date with a female Saint Bernard that might produce a “Saint Berdoodle,” a hulking though well-groomed 180 pound dog that slobbers, follows directions well enough to prepare its own microwave dinners, but barks incessantly, thinking it hears an avalanche.

At least with the Saint Berdoodle a backpack makes sense to replace the iconic brandy barrel that hangs from the dog’s throat, like oversized costume jewelry or a chronic goiter. By contrast, you won’t see cats wearing backpacks, even though feline backpacks are available. Yesterday a black cat dashed across the street in front of my car. I didn’t have bad luck because a few hours later a brown and white cat crossed in front of my car, which, by Superstition Law, officially nullifies the first cat crossing. Had the previous black cat been wearing a bulky backpack, for sure it would have been road kill.

Cats know this. After observing human children with their backpack humps, cats can’t be suckered into wearing this medieval apparatus. Cats also don’t need their spines stretched by backpacks since they go to yoga class where they learn Cat Stretches. These yoga classes foster agility that enable cats to arch their backs, twist and sprawl, just like the young women who send me their revealing Twitter photos.

But cats, at least, when they Tweet me with a photo, have the good taste not to be wearing a string thong.

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March 18, 2010